Asynchronous Optical Sampling for Laser-Based Vector Network Analysis on Coplanar Waveguides

We employ asynchronous optical sampling to realize a laser-based vector network analyzer. This time-domain approach utilizes two separate femtosecond lasers for the generation and detection of ultrashort voltage pulses on a waveguide structure and does not require any optical delay lines. The new scheme allows us to increase the measurement epoch, enabling a frequency resolution of 76 MHz while simultaneously covering a broad frequency range up to approximately 500 GHz.